MONACA, Beaver County - In a dimly lit steakhouse some 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, two school superintendents - one current and one newly retired - crowd into a booth illuminated by neon signs.

The smell of barbecue permeates the air at PJ's Bar-B-Q & Steak House, as Nick Perry and Dan Matsook grab menus and talk school mergers.

For Matsook, it's a familiar setting for such a discussion.

In October 2005, Matsook, then superintendent of the Center Area School District, sat in another restaurant, the Ground Round in nearby Moon Township, where he and school officials from his district and the neighboring Monaca School District laid the foundation for what would be the first voluntary merger of two school districts in Pennsylvania.

"We basically sat in a booth like this," Matsook recalled. "We said, 'We don't want to make a decision to merge, but do we at least want to explore it and do one more study?' We agreed that night to take it back to our full school boards, with no commitment to do anything, just do one final study and put the thing to rest."

The decision to merge the two Beaver County school districts into the newly formed Central Valley School District would prove a groundbreaking one for educators across the state.

As the Exeter and Antietam districts debate the merits of a merger, they can look to Central Valley to understand the challenges and opportunities they would face.

'Buckle up'

Two and a half years after Central Valley graduated its first class in 2011, it remains the first and only voluntary merger among Pennsylvania school districts.

It wasn't easy. But socially and geographically, Matsook said, merging the Center and Monaca districts was the logical choice.

"The communities were more similar than they were different," said Matsook, who served as the first superintendent of the new Central Valley School District.

In June, he retired and handed over the reins to Perry, his assistant superintendent.

"Our locations, our communities, the emphasis on sports and extracurricular activities," Matsook said, "it was all the same."

Merging into one was a transition, said Jenn Bernat, president of the Central Valley Parent Teacher Association.

"And you kind of have to buckle up for the ride," she said.

"The first couple of years," she added, "the challenge was just getting everybody to sit down at the table and, politics aside, act like adults and make the decisions that are best for the students." Between its two farthest points in Potter Township and Monaca Borough, the Central Valley School District spans about 7 miles.

"They all shop at the Beaver Valley Mall," Matsook said. "They all go to the same churches. They all go to the same social clubs, whether it's the Polish Club, the Ukrainian Club."

Through sports, scouting and other activities, students were hardly strangers when the two districts came together.

"It's such a small area that you can't help but know them," Bernat said. "At the younger levels, the merger meant nothing. It was just a new friend that they had."

Low numbers

At the time of Central Valley's merger, both schools were facing declining enrollments.

During the 2008-09 school year, the Center School District had around 1,850 students. Monaca, a borough with 20 percent of its population over the age of 65 in 2010, had an enrollment of just 650.

The numbers mirrored the trend across the rest of Beaver County, which over the last decade saw its school-age population decline from 35,795 in 2000 to 30,193 in 2010.

"There are 14 school districts in Beaver County," Bernat said. "These school districts are incredibly small. Central Valley now averages approximately 200 kids in a grade. I believe Monaca at the time was between 30-40 kids in a class. They were very small."

With that dwindling school population across the county, Bernat added, "You have such incredible overlap. There's so much spending on duplicate services that don't actually impact the education of children. Basically, you're wasting taxpayer money on things that could go straight into the classroom."

At Monaca, school officials were faced with aging buildings in need of major renovations. Had the merger not happened, Matsook said, a hefty tax increase would have been necessary. The Center School District, on the other hand, looked fine on the surface, leading some parents to question why a merger was needed.

"Financially, we were fine," Matsook said. "But taxes were going to be going up because of what we were facing."

Rumors abounded that there would be pressure from the state to merge.

Would there be a repeat of the 1960s, when mandated mergers reduced the number of Pennsylvania districts from 2,277 to 669?

"In the back of our minds, we always had the fact that years ago, they did force districts to merge," Matsook said. "This was our opportunity to be proactive and control who it is we're going to merge with."

Cultural identity

In western Pennsylvania, where high school football rivalries run deep and school ties can define you, talk of a potential merger created a stir in the communities that run along the Ohio River.

"Around here, in general-terms speaking, people are very loyal to their town," Bernat said. "So to merge with anybody, it's almost like losing your cultural identity. Your high school is gone. You're losing your mascot, your colors."

Many in the two districts opposed the merger.

"Getting the whole big picture of it, it was a no-brainer," said Sam Cercone, a Monaca graduate and Central Valley's director of athletics and transportation. "You don't do it for yourself. You do it for the whole community, for the whole scheme of things, coming together and uniting to make yourself more."

According to Bernat, it was the adults who put up the biggest fight.

"The kids were fine with it," she said. "That's the thing the adults are missing. What are you really fighting for?"

'Jelled'

In September 2008, school boards from Center and Monaca jointly approved the merger.

The Central Valley name was selected through a communitywide online survey, with students suggesting and voting on color combinations for the new district.

"Right now, you could walk through the halls and you wouldn't be able to distinguish who a Monaca kid is and who a Center kid is," Cercone said. "And that's a credit to the kids and both communities. They got the ball and they rolled with it."

The first year of the full merger, 2010, the newly formed Central Valley Warriors won the AAA WPIAL football championship. It was a new class of competition for a new team: Monaca's football team previously had competed in Class A, and Center in AA.

And in its first year, that new team topped noted football powerhouses to take the title.

"I could see it then that we were just jelled; the way our fans reacted, the way our kids reacted," said Cercone, the assistant football coach at the time. "Any critics out there, they were gone."